“The Bearded Gentleman: The Style Guide to Shaving Face” piqued my interest in being a man again. Since the divorce, the flame had certainly flickered. I got my hands on a copy and the book is fantastic. It is the de facto quick reference guide on personal style in relation to facial hair ever created, and I am including “The Bible” in that generalization as well.

Dr. Allan Peterkin and Nick (side) Burns toe the line between tongue and cheek humor and historical analysis beautifully. You didn’t know a beard could be “historically analyzed,” did you? Read on, young brother.

The book is an easy read, weighing in at 142 pages comprised of five chapters. But so much ground is covered effortlessly that it could easily be 500 pages. In terms of usefulness, it could be 700 hundred pages. In terms of making you a better “beardsman,” it could be 1,000,000 pages; imagine the size of that book.

“The Bearded Gentleman” opens by addressing the age old question about beard growth in chapter one, “Should I Shave or Should I Grow?” It also attacks myths associated with beards and shaving head-on, leaving the reader with an authoritative answer on things we want to know, but forgot we wanted to know them.

Then, if we were to remember that we wanted to know them, we’d most certainly forget when being in the physical presence of a man with that breadth of knowledge, a man like Dr. Peterkin.

For instance, the number one myth about facial hair and styling is that shaving more actually makes hair grow faster or thicker. In fact, it does not have either effect owing to the fact that, “Facial hair is dead. It just seems thicker when it’s short. When you shave a hair, a once fine point becomes a blunt end, which feels thicker to the touch.”

Aren’t much for the book learnin’ Cletus? Well, calm down, fella. There are 50-plus pages detailing every style of facial hair you can think of, with pictures.

The weird shit that hipster was rocking on his facial canvas when you were in line at the post office the other day? Yeah, there’s a name for that. It’s called the “Garibaldi Beard.” From the “Freddie Mercury” to the “The French Fork,” there are images of each, alongside descriptions of how to achieve the look.

The book also addresses the social stigma associated with facial hair and what is socially acceptable in a classic Q&A format. For example, “Both my dad and my dentist now have goatees. Should I shave mine off?”

“The Bearded Gentleman: The Style Guide to Shaving Face” is the perfect gift for the man in your life, or your mother-in-law who rocks a grey-haired goatee and is seemingly oblivious to it, though it makes everyone else around her so uncomfortable, they can’t even stand to look at her.